Oprah

by Kitty Kelley

  Neither objection fazed Oprah. Needing the approval and good opinion of others, she preferred joining the establishment to jabbing it, and the establishment view then was in support of invading Iraq. Temperamentally, Oprah would have been uncomfortable putting herself in the minority by questioning the president’s policies, especially in the wake of 9/11, when any kind of dissent was looked upon as unpatriotic. Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly had announced, “I will call those who publicly criticize their country in a time of military crisis…bad Americans.” Later Oprah presented a two-part program, “Should the U.S. Attack Iraq?” on February 6 and 7, 2003, and claimed she received hate mail, calling her “the N word” and telling her “to go back to Africa” because she was not pro-war enough. That was her last show on the subject. The United States invaded Iraq on March 30, 2003.

  Four years later, Bill Moyers Journal produced a compelling ninety-minute program on PBS titled “Buying the War,” which showed how the mainstream media had abandoned their role as watchdogs and became lapdogs for a failed policy that cost thousands of American and Iraqi lives. Moyers, who received an Emmy for his documentary, included Oprah in his condemnation of the media.

  At the time she seemed to be cheerleading for the Bush administration, Oprah had attracted numerous complaints to the Federal Communications Commission for airing explicit sexual material during hours when children watched television. Particularly at issue was a show titled “Is Your Child Living a Double Life?” in which Oprah and her guests spoke graphically about the sexual slang and sexual acts of teenagers. “If your child said they had their salad tossed…would you know what they meant?” she asked viewers. She then provided the graphic and salacious definitions of “tossed salad,” “outercourse,” “booty call,” and “rainbow parties,” which prompted a barrage of complaints to the FCC. Shock jock Howard Stern tried to air her remarks on his radio show the next day, but his New York station manager bleeped them for obscene and indecent language. “But it’s Oprah,” protested Stern, who had been fined almost $2 million by the FCC for using similar language. Without friends in high places, he felt that he was being held to a double standard.

  One of the FCC complainants against Oprah agreed. “The very day that Howard Stern was fined, Oprah broadcast sexual and excretory material that was even more explicit,” wrote Jeff Jarvis, the former television critic of TV Guide. “I’ve complained and so have many others. But you can bet she won’t be fined….” Claiming that Oprah had done her show on teen sex just to get the subject of sex on the air, Jarvis called her a hypocrite. “Oprah: You can’t act as if you don’t bear considerable responsibility for this. You brought sex to afternoon TV. Now I don’t think you should be fined for that and I don’t think you should be taken off the air for that: I just don’t watch you. But you’re doing nothing different from Howard Stern—except getting away with it. So cut your holier-than-thou disapproval of sex on the rest of TV. You are the Queen of Trash.”

  The Santa Barbara News-Press, which served the area where Oprah’s mansion in Montecito was located, also noted the hypocrisy. “What parents want their kids to come home from school, run to turn on Oprah and be subjected to that stuff?” wrote Scott Steepleton, assistant metro editor. “The time has come for the FCC to stop applying the law in such an arbitrary fashion. If it’s crude, it’s crude—no matter whose show it’s on.” Yet the FCC ruled in 2006 that Oprah’s show on teenage sex was not indecent because the explicit language was not used to shock.

  One can only wonder if the FCC was out of order during the February sweeps of 2006 when Oprah did a show titled “Women Who Use Sex to Find Love.” She interviewed a woman, given the fictitious name of Jennifer, who claimed to have had sex with ninety men, keeping an ongoing list and video diary of her one-night stands. Oprah stunned the blogosphere when she said to Jennifer, “So you’ve had men ejaculate in your face who you don’t even know who they are.” The mainstream media did not comment on the Jennifer show, but Robert Paul Reyes, on AmericanChronicle.com, accused Oprah of trolling the gutter to rack up ratings.

  “Millions of women tune in to you for inspirational and educational programming and you interview a nymphomaniac who’s had unprotected sex with almost 100 guys?”

  Unfazed, Oprah may have felt immunized from FCC pressure because of her relationship with the Bush White House, so she continued presenting tabloidy sex shows intermixed with feel-good and do-good shows. A partial list of 2004–2009 shows:

  “Is Your Sex Life Normal?” (2/19/04)

  “Is Your Child Living a Double Life?” (3/18/04)

  “Secret Sex in the Suburbs” (11/19/04)

  “Wife Swapping” (12/27/04)

  “Venus, Serena and Jada Pinkett Smith on Dating, Sex and Weight” (3/30/05)

  “Releasing Your Inner Sexpot” (5/31/05)

  “Women Who Use Sex to Find Love” (2/23/06)

  “Female Teachers, Young Boys, Secret Sex at School” (4/27/06)

  “Why Do Men Go to Strip Clubs, and Other Burning Questions” (1/1/07)

  “237 Reasons to Have Sex” (9/25/07)

  “How They Revved Up Their Sex Life” (8/27/08)

  “Behind Closed Doors: Sex Therapy” (10/2/08)

  “Sex Therapy 2: Fears, Fantasies and Faking It” (11/21/08)

  “Best Life Week: Relationships, Intimacy and Sex” (1/9/09)

  “Sex: Women Reveal What They Really Want” (4/03/09)

  “How to Talk to Your Kids About Sex, with Dr. Laura Berman” (4/09/09)

  “14 Years Old: They Say They’re Ready for Sex” (4/16/09)

  “How to Get Your Sexy Back Makeovers” (6/15/09)

  “Former Child Star Mackenzie Phillips’ Startling Revelations” (9/23/09)

  “Mackenzie and Chynna Phillips, Jay Leno and Harry Connick Jr.” (9/25/09)

  As much as she may have helped George W. Bush get elected president, Oprah did even more for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2003 race for governor of California. “Both of those candidates had real difficulty on policy issues and had issues with women voters,” said Mark Sawyer, director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics. “The ‘are-you-a-nice-guy-to-talk-to’ aspect of [going on] Oprah” made both Bush and Schwarzenegger more approachable candidates.

  When Schwarzenegger appeared on the show, he was being investigated by the Los Angeles Times for numerous incidents of sexual harassment over three decades. By the time the newspaper ran its series, there were sixteen women who claimed to have been groped and mauled by him against their will. Most did not come forward voluntarily because they were afraid of reprisals in Hollywood. Some said Schwarzenegger had attacked them in elevators or on movie sets. One said he wrestled her from behind, shoving his hands up her skirt. Another said he grabbed her breasts, threw her up against the wall, and demanded sex. All described his language as lewd and demeaning.

  That evening David Letterman joked, “Today the L.A. Times accused Schwarzenegger of groping…women. I’m telling you. This guy is presidential material.”

  Schwarzenegger admitted to telling coarse and bawdy jokes in front of women, but he denied all charges of sexual harassment. Still, his sudden decision to enter California’s recall election had exposed his personal behavior to public scrutiny, and so his first interview after announcing his candidacy on The Tonight Show was on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

  “Everyone wanted that interview,” Oprah said of her exclusive booking. “But I played the friendship card.” She also bathed Schwarzenegger in the warm glow of her acceptance: “Arnold is a mentor to a lot of men, but the thing that they’re mentoring is the macho, the muscles. But what makes Arnold Arnold is the balance. He knows and practices sensitivity.” She extolled him as a father and lauded the Schwarzeneggers’ four children as a tribute to both parents. Such praise from Oprah enabled him to overcome the resistance of women who remembered the boasts of “Arnold the Barbarian” to Oui magazine in 1977 about his drug exploits, gymnasium gang-bang orgies, and
demands for oral sex during bodybuilding tournaments.

  Weeks before he announced his candidacy he had given an interview to Esquire comparing himself to a beautiful woman whose looks cause people to underestimate her intelligence:

  When you see a blonde with great tits and a great ass, you say to yourself, hey, she must be stupid or must have nothing else to offer….But then again there is the one that is as smart as her breasts look, great as her face looks, beautiful as her whole body looks, gorgeous, you know, so people are shocked.

  His crude and galloping arrogance sparked Molly Ivins to write, “Is it just me, or doesn’t he look like a condom filled with walnuts?”

  Oprah promoted her new season’s premiere, on September 15, 2003, as “my exclusive with Arnold and Maria—the campaign, the rumors, their first interview together, ever!” She opened with Maria Shriver, who was familiar to Oprah’s viewers from her past appearances, from the many references Oprah made to their friendship, and from the pages she devoted to Maria on her website. They began with girlfriend memories of working together in Baltimore, and Oprah showed pictures of herself at Maria’s wedding at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. Then she asked about her husband’s reputation as a womanizer.

  “I know the man I’m married to,” said Maria. “I’ve been with him for twenty-six years. I make up my mind on him based on him. Not based on what people say.”

  “Do you think Kennedy women are bred to look the other way when it comes to marital infidelity?”

  “That ticks me off. I have not been quote ‘bred’ to look the other way. I accept him with all his strengths and all his weaknesses. I’m not perfect either.”

  Oprah brought up the stories depicting Arnold as a misogynist, and Maria said he was “the exact opposite” of a woman-hater. “He makes me coffee every morning, tells me I’m wonderful, and has been supportive of my career.”

  Arnold joined his wife in the next segment. Sitting down, he reached over and grabbed Maria’s hand. “This woman here has been the most incredible friend, the most incredible wife and mother,” he said. Oprah beamed happily, and her studio audience clapped. “They love celebrities,” she said later, knowing her show was Celebrity Central for her viewers.

  She asked Schwarzenegger about his infamous Oui interview, but he said he didn’t remember it. “The idea [then] was to say things that were so over the top you could get headlines.”

  “But did you remember the parties, Arnold?”

  “I really don’t. These were the times I was saying things like ‘a pump is better than coming.’ ”

  Maria’s hand shot to his face, clamping his mouth shut. “My mother is watching this show. My God!”

  The New York Times later chided Oprah for doing such “a big favor” for Schwarzenegger by having him on her show. Citing the federal equal-time rule, the newspaper said, “Now she needs to do the voters a favor, and extend an invitation to the other top candidates in the California governor’s race….[E]ven if Ms. Winfrey has the right to invite only one candidate, it is a poor use of her franchise.”

  Oprah ignored the editorial advice because the Kennedy franchise was far more important to her. She also dismissed the Nation article titled “Governor Groper,” which accused her of caring more about “celebrity…than sisterhood,” saying that the people who really needed her platform were “women who think humiliating, insulting and harassing women is something worth talking about.” Schwarzenegger won the recall election in 2003 and was reelected in 2006. Oprah contributed $5,000 to his campaign that year, the only political contribution she made.

  Having flexed her muscle, she now became a political celebrity herself, and members of the Reform Party set up a website to entice her to run for president, while the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore started an online petition:

  We, the undersigned, call on you to declare yourself a candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America. We want to hear your ideas on how to straighten this country out and we think you can force the other candidates to stand by their hearts and consciences. At the very least, you can shake things up, but more likely, you can destroy the field and blow through the elections to become our first black President, our first woman President and our first President in recent memory who represents the interests of the American People.

  Others took up the call, including the author Robert Fulghum, (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten), who also endorsed Oprah for president on his website. This prompted David Letterman to read as one of his “Top Ten Things Overheard at the Republican Weekend”: “We’ve all had it—Oprah just announced her candidacy!” Aaron McGruder’s TV series The Boondocks ran an episode titled “Return of the King,” about Martin Luther King, Jr., that ended with a newspaper headline: “Oprah Elected President.” The biggest effort to make Oprah commander in chief came in 2003, when Patrick Crowe, a former schoolteacher and owner of Wonderful Waldo Car Wash in Kansas City, Missouri, set up a website selling “Oprah for President” mugs, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. He reaped tons of publicity after publishing the book Oprah for President: Run, Oprah, Run! Immediately, the sixty-nine-year-old fan got slapped with a three-page cease-and-desist letter from Oprah’s lawyers, citing nineteen copyright violations, plus the unauthorized use of her name, image, and likeness. They gave him five days to respond.

  “They should not have sent that letter,” Oprah told Larry King. “I didn’t appreciate that my attorneys did that.”

  Mr. Crowe was not intimidated. When Oprah called him to suggest he put his time and energy into supporting Barack Obama, who was not a presidential candidate at the time, Crowe suggested that Oprah give the new Illinois senator a seat in her cabinet. He then explained to reporters why she would make a great president: “The business genius. The heart of gold. Her ability to get folks to work together…her fierce determination—she’s just not a girl you’d wanna mess with.”

  Although Oprah never ran for public office and said she never would, she possessed immense charisma and represented credibility to millions. In addition, she took stands on issues that alternated between pleasing both Democrats and Republicans. She was for a woman’s right to choose. She was against the death penalty, and she opposed guns, legalized drugs, and welfare. She supported the war in Iraq (and then she opposed it). On crime, she recommended hanging drunk drivers, but keeping them alive so they would be continuously tortured “in their privates.” A little squishy on religion, she quoted the Bible but did not attend church. She preached self-improvement (makeovers and cleansing fasts) and self-empowerment (believe it and achieve it) sprinkled with the New Agey piffle of The Secret. On family values she covered all the bases: she applauded motherhood but for herself she had chosen a career over children; she lived with a man outside of marriage but traveled constantly with her best female friend.

  Contradictions aside, Oprah became a towering presence in America, a one-woman cathedral collecting alms for the poor, hearing confessions, and issuing edicts: “Don’t chew gum in my presence.” “Always bring a hostess gift.” “Soak in your tub fifteen minutes a day.” “Shop, shop, shop.” Dispensing judgments from on high, she chastised Lionel Richie for being an absentee father, thumped Olympic track-and-field star Marion Jones for lying about taking performance-enhancing drugs, and upbraided Toni Braxton for going bankrupt after spending $1,000 for Gucci silverware.

  Occasionally Oprah bestowed forgiveness ex cathedra. In a satellite interview with twenty-two-year-old Jessica Coleman, serving a six-year sentence in the Ohio Reformatory for Women for killing her newborn baby when she was fifteen, Oprah was as tough as a hanging judge throughout most of the show. She directed Coleman to tell the story of hiding her pregnancy; having the baby, which appeared to be stillborn; stabbing the infant; and then stuffing its body into a duffel bag, which her boyfriend ended up tossing into a quarry. When the baby was found, the community of Columbia Station, Ohio, named him Baby Boy Hope and gave him a proper funeral. For six yea
rs police searched for the infant’s killer and found her only after Coleman was overheard in a bar sobbing out her sad story.

  “Did you know that at the age of fourteen, I hid a pregnancy?” Oprah asked her. “I was raped at nine and sexually abused from the time I was ten to fourteen. At fourteen years old I became pregnant….The stress of [having to confess my pregnancy to my father] caused me to go into labor, and the baby died [thirty-six days later]….There are a lot of teenagers out there right now who are hiding their secret, just as I hid mine, because…like you, I didn’t feel there was anybody I could tell. Your speaking out today is going to give a lot of girls the courage to do that….You are not your past. You are what is possible for you. Own this truth and move forward in your life. Forgive yourself, and others will be able to forgive you.”

  Oprah’s show had become the place where miscreants begged for mercy or, as in the case of NBC’s anchorman Brian Williams and news president Steve Capus, defended controversial actions. After airing photos and parts of videos sent by the maniacal killer who shot thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007, NBC was severely criticized for broadcasting the shooter’s final hate-filled words before he killed himself. Many felt the network had been exploitive in giving the mass murderer national attention without considering the feelings of the bereaved. So a week after the broadcast, Williams and Capus appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

  “We were…very careful as to how many pictures we were showing,” Brian Williams told Oprah, “and I think…now, it has all but disappeared.”

  Oprah set him straight. “It disappeared, Brian, because the people said, because the public said, ‘We don’t want to see it.’ ”